


Birthing Pangs

by Kit



Category: Bitterblue - Kristin Cashore, Seven Kingdoms Trilogy - Kristin Cashore
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Queen Ashen wonders what she has done</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthing Pangs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bitterblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/gifts).



Queen Ashen was glad that, of all the people who could have shared her chamber at these moments, it had been Thiel who stayed.

Darby was the most active of Leck’s healers. Runnemood had soothing words and a way at looking at you to say: _Yes, my lady, you will be fine. No tricks or trials._ Rood, perhaps, had the gentlest hands.

But it was Thiel who stayed. Stayed when Leck left her side and the world _hurt_ , her muscles tight and fast and sure that no, no she did _not_ want to birth this child—not in a world of fog and gaps that had snuck on Leinid’s smallest, greyest, dimmest sister-Princess. 

Thiel was tall and dark and almost grim, except that he bit his lip with worry, and the worry felt almost sweet. It was true, and made  her reach up to lay one sweaty hand against his cheek; she  imagined, before he pulled away, that he leaned there, just a little.

“Not long now, Lady Queen.” His voice, as haggard as his face, cut through another wrench of pain, as her body fought. Fought to push, fought to keep, fought unconsciousness.

“Oh,Thiel.” She laughed, high and brittle. “ Not long until _what_?”

He did not answer her, but he did run his thumb over the back of the hand he held. Back and forth. Steady. True.

The world was speeding up around that touch. Her pulse and her breath and her muscles all moved without the consent of Ashen's mind—which, a part of her thought, lucid and wry, should not confuse her in the _least—_ and then Thiel was moving, looking at her and not _at her_ , as she lay splayed in her room. He was looking at a head, at shoulders, at—at—at—

“-- _Lady Queen_.” The healer—bloody from things Ashen did not want to think about—straightened, a squirming, tiny thing in his arms. It looked hideous. It looked like she felt, and that made her smile. Thiel did something—cut something—soothed her as her muscles still spasmed and the new body started to mewl.  “Look what you _made_.”

Ashen looked. Ashen gasped. “I—“

“—she’ll have your eyes.” Ashen had never seem the healer look so radiant, as he handed over the child, whose eyes were cross and a sort of milky black that seemed like they might settle on anything and nothing.

“How do you know?” Ashen felt her own mouth quirk, and touched the baby’s tiny nose.

“Healer’s intuition,” he deadpanned. But then he placed a shaking hand on the baby’s forehead. And Ashen felt something in her own heart constrict.  

“She?”

“Yes, Ash—yes, my Lady Queen.”

Ashen looked down at the baby girl in her hands, and watched, mute, as tears started to splash on the new, wrinkled, tiny face.

Thiel’s hand moved to her shoulder. Shifted gently up under her damp hair. Just for a moment. “I’ll protect her, Lady Queen,” he whispered. “I promise.”

Queen Ashen straightened. “So,” she said, “Will _I.”_

There was a warm, beautiful laugh from the doorway. 

“Ah! You’ve done it, at last! Very good, Thiel. Leave, now. You were never here.”  

Ashen  blinked, watching as her husband leant in to examine the child. Her child. _His_ child.

How lucky she was, to have a family, and to never be alone.

 


End file.
